Talk:101 Stumbles in the March of History
I confess, I find the "Tolerant Byzantium" and "Badass McClellan" scenarios intriguing and would not be at all hurt if they led to some fiction. The Kursk one...not so much. TR (talk) 19:05, November 2, 2016 (UTC) :I tend to agree. Turtle Fan (talk) 22:14, November 2, 2016 (UTC) ::These might be good ideas for a hypothetical Alternate Generals IV. I really wish. ::If McClellan had won the war in late 1862/early 1863, wouldn't the Lincoln-McClellan split not happen? Lincoln, sure to be reelected as a hero President, might even choose McClellan to supplant Hannibal Hamlin as VP. Then McClellan would likely be a shoo-in for 1868 as Grant was in OTL. :::Given McClellan's ego, and his recorded hatred for Lincoln well before 1862, in this scenario McClellan would be openly and gleefully stabbing Lincoln in the back. He did it in OTL really, it's just that at some point, he didn't enough wins of his own to really hide behind, so to speak. In the HT scenario, where he's the effective winner of the war, he could very easily call the tune. While he himself was fairly devoutly Democratic, IIRC, I could even see the GOP courting him in 1864 under those circumstances. TR (talk) 16:36, November 3, 2016 (UTC) ::While HT has worn out his welcome for long drawn-out WW2 epics, the Kursk scenario might make a neat short story in the vein of "Ready for the Fatherland." :::I'd rather see more stories set in RftF world, especially since, as RftF itself shows, it's not a very good vehicle for military fiction, but it is an excellent one for Cold War style intrigue. TR (talk) 16:36, November 3, 2016 (UTC) ::::While the Kursk essay is more of a revenge "Hitler burns in a nuclear blast" type of scenario, there are some possibilities that lead to a conventional Cold War scenario. Essays on mistakes #67 and #68 deal with the Battle of the Bulge with #67 being Allied errors and #68 German ones. The what ifs boil down to Patton's 3rd Army not being diverted from crossing the Rhine into Germany might have had him in Berlin before the Soviets (#67: Allies not ignoring intelligence reports of German build-up) or the Germans not staging their offensive at all and using the 150,000 infantry troops to reinforce the Eastern Front (#68). This might have prevented any Soviet occupation of Germany leaving them at the Polish/German border when the war ended. ::::That second scenario could arise from Turtledove's Kursk error. If Germany continued to use von Manstein's tactics rather than to try to pinch off the Kursk salient, then it could have slowed the Soviet advance to a similar extent. When Berlin burned, the Soviets might have been at the Polish/German border. This would give rise to a US/Soviet Cold War with the East in a weaker position. Admittedly, not as interesting as the other two possibilities. ML4E (talk) 18:15, November 3, 2016 (UTC) ::The Julian scenario is kind of like Agrippan Rome, although not identical. It would be nice to have HT return to Rome and/or Byzantium on some terms.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:21, November 3, 2016 (UTC) :::I rolled back your edit on the article, Jonathan, because Constantine I's rule is considered the rise of the Byzantine Empire. While Turtledove does talk about Julian fighting Germans in Gaul, this was when he was "Caesar" and not "Augustus". His main battles as Emperor (Augustus) were in the East against Persia where he died. The essay is fairly clear that he would rule from Constantinople rather than Rome making it more Byzantine than Roman Empire. The Byzantines of the day considered themselves Roman but it is clearer to a modern reader that we are dealing with the beginnings of the Byzantine Empire. ML4E (talk) 18:15, November 3, 2016 (UTC)